LOW CLOUDS DARKEN the April sun as Glenn Close turns onto a country road toward the place where she intends, she says, smiling, to die. The actress, 78, started her day much like any other. Shortly after dawn, she put on a pair of brown Carhartt work pants and a white button-up shirt and fed Sir Pippin of Beanfield, or Pip, her 9-year-old Havanese. Together they drove from her two-bedroom home in a modest section of Bozeman, Mont., a ski town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, to Main Street Overeasy for pancakes, which she soaked with her own batch of Canadian maple syrup, kept by the diner’s owner in the kitchen. On the side of the jug, she’s listed in black Sharpie those who may use it: Alexander “Sandy” Close, her younger brother; Tina Close, her older sister; Jessie Close, her younger sister; Annie Starke, her only daughter; and Marc Albu, Annie’s husband; as well as some nieces, nephews and other in-laws. After breakfast, Close visited Sandy, 74, a machinist, at his workshop to see about polishing a few salvaged copper doorknobs, then headed to a home supply store in search of a hydraulic log splitter.
Now, just before noon, we arrive not too far north of Bozeman at what will be the home she’s always wanted. From a distance, a half-dozen or so connected stone and wooden structures, organized around a main building with an open dining and living area that’ll have an imposing fireplace and a loft for watching movies in, resemble a country club more than a private residence. She points to a tiny guesthouse, a near replica of her maternal grandparents’ cottage in Greenwich, Conn., where she lived on and off as a child. “When I get really feeble, that’s where I’m going to be,” she says. “It’ll be tighter than a tick.”
Strong winds push through the construction site, rattling the fir siding and sending a shiver down the stream that cuts across the sprawling property. Close can’t wait for what it’ll feel like when it’s all done: lazy evenings in the library; the sound of her grandson, Rory, playing outside. “And a big, wonderful room for all of us to get together,” she says. “We’ve never had that.” The compound — Mooreland, as she calls it, after her mother’s side of the family — is in part a testament to her siblings. Jessie, who’s bipolar, landed in Bozeman in 1984 during a string of manic episodes; a friend told her it was an easy place to find work. In 2019, long after Sandy had joined their sister, followed by Tina, Close arrived permanently from New York. “Every nail is from a character I’ve created,” she says as we look around. “I go away and do my movies to pay for this house.”
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